Two alumnae recognized as top ‘Innovators Under 35’

Two UC Berkeley alumnae who are doing potentially life-saving research and development have made MIT Technology Review’s 2015 list of “35 Innovators Under 35.”

Rikky Muller

Rikky Muller earned her Ph.D in electrical engineering at Berkeley and is co-founder of Cortera Neurotechnologies, Inc. The Berkeley-based medical device start-up, founded in 2013, is focused on developing innovative medical devices to study and treat neurological disorders.

The company has received grants and awards from DARPA (as part of the Obama BRAIN initiative), the NIH, UC Berkeley, The University of Melbourne and the State of Victoria in Australia.

Also honored is Elizabeth Mormino, who earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Berkeley in 2011 with Dr. William Jagust, a professor of neuroscience in the School of Public Health. Her dissertation focused on amyloid imaging in clinically normal older from the Berkeley Aging Cohort.

The MIT citation noted her work in combining two imaging technologies to more accurately detect the protein beta-amyloid, which is found in patients with Alzheimer’s, in the brain. Her work now, as a researcher at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, is focused on people whose brains show deposits of beta amyloid but who have no signs of cognitive decline. It’s possible that protective factors could help people be more resilient to the disease, or lead to preventive methods, she told MIT.